Unique Blogger 2: It Happened Again

The happiest image that will ever appear on this blog

I often feel that if people really got to know me, really looked deep into me beyond the toxicity and snark, then they’d finally find what I’ve known was deep down in me all along: I’m terrible. However, combatting my overriding sense of self-loathing is the kind action of another blogger who, when I nominated them for the Unique Blogger Award, turned around and nominated me right back. The blogger in question is Freedom Writer, and a nomination from her feels a lot like the actual literary canon walked up to me and said “nice job with the jokes there, buddy,” which is a pretty nice feeling. Freedom Writer is a fantastic poet and masterful painter, and not visiting her blog is the internet-equivalent of someone approaching you on the street and offering you a free pass to a museum which you turn down because you’d rather stare vacuously at a used bandage on the floor of a McDonald’s restroom.

Now, onto the next bit.

I remember back in the day when I was new to the whole “award” game, but a lot has changed since that time so, so long ago. I don’t even have to copy and paste the rules like I did last time. Let me clarify, I don’t have to, but I choose to because my heroic flaw is laziness. I’m the Achilles of naps.

The rules are as follows:

Share the link of the blogger who has shown love to you by nominating you.

Answer the questions.

In the spirit of sharing love and solidarity with our blogging family, nominate 8-13 people for the same award.

Ask them 3 questions.

And now I get to answer the questions assigned to me which might be a good time, or it might reveal too much about me and make people realize I’m not worth knowing. We’ll see.

1. What drives you?My first impulse is to be sarcastic and say something like “a car,” but that would be mean, and I have to remind myself that being mean is not something I should do all the time, just on special occasions. So in a figurative sense, what drives me most is mostly frustration. A lot of my writing online is just about weird things that annoy me, and that is also what carries me through the day. However, anger is a pretty shallow emotion, and I’m not saying I’m a particularly deep person, but I do go marginally further in my personal drive than just disliking things. I am driven by frustration that moves me to want to make myself and the world around me a little different. I see people repeatedly slapping buttons at crosswalks or gleefully talk at people who would much rather be left alone, and I am frustrated at their near-terminal lack of self-awareness.

2. What moves you?I run the gambit between emotionally numb like a cement wall and openly sobbing at episodes of The Office. Not much moves me, and then a lot does. I love my SO and my cat and my family and a few friends, and that’s about it. Sometimes I’m surprised by how much something can give me an emotional reaction, and sometimes I’m disappointed that I feel the same looking at a sunset as I do looking at a discarded candy wrapper at a bus stop. Also, I like puns. Those move me to giggles.

3. What gives you absolute pleasure?Work, but also not working. I love my job, and I love writing, and I am flooded with pleasure when I feel I’ve accomplished something worth accomplishing. I like knowing I’ve been useful to my students or that I’ve written something I enjoy reading. But I also absolutely adore being lazy, laying on the floor and groaning at responsibility, and closing my eyes until the nagging feeling that I’ve got something I need to get done goes away. Maybe that’s why I like blogging so much. I never write long posts, but I almost always like them while I’m writing them, and then it’s over before I’ve come even close to exhausting myself, and then I can take a nap.

Those were fun questions. Now, onto the 8 people who will have to answer questions of mine (and this time, there won’t be any glaring typos)

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10 Replies to “Unique Blogger 2: It Happened Again”

With my birthday around the corner, I think this came just in time. And it’s genuinely one of the nicest gifts I could possibly get – and what do you know, all the way from Arizona! Thank you, dear teacher with the puns and the jokes! 🙂 Your kind words moved me, as well as the thought that you attached the happiest photo on your blog to this post. And now I can say that your writing moves me to giggles (sometimes to proper laughing outbursts) – there’s really no better way of putting it.

This was well deserved fun on all sides. On reflecting on the third question, I discovered we probably have “all the money [we] would ever need.” We are entertained by traveling and living as cheap as possible (so we never need more money than we have).

Thanks for the mention and the honor! Love these answers, and love getting to know new blogs. I have to say, though, that you’re being too hard on yourself, in my opinion: a bus stop wrapper can be fascinating and unique; the sun rises every single day. Which is awesome and all, but if I’ve seen it once. . .

Oh, I think I’m being exactly hard enough on myself. Maybe I’ll end up like those naturally polished rocks you find on beaches and at the river: they got that way because a lot of stuff just trashed them